Cthulhu Rising
by yaslmiri
Summary: this is another Lovecraft based tale for the Cthulhu mythose


Cthulhu Rising

It is only with the greatest of caution that I relate this tale to you, my dear captain. For, in my heart I can feel that it may lead you and your crew to the same dark fate by which I am plagued. I have been under this great torment ever since the event I will relate to you occurred. It is only my wish that you avoid these waters, turn around and sail home, for there is nothing here but death and evil.It was about a week ago, the last time that I got a peaceful night of sleep. It was the day before the tragedy. I am sure from my composure you can tell of my plight. I am rotted out, hollow like an old shell of what I once was. This evil has rotted me. I cannot describe to you in all truth the real extent to which this horror has filled me.  
It all started, sadly enough, with my sister. She was such a bright young girl. She had all the hope in the world. You see, I was bringing her back home from England, where we had been vacationing, when the tragedy happened. It was a brisk day and the wind was blowing gently over our ship as we sailed across the sea. We did not have the money for plain tickets so the pair of us had booked our passage on a more reasonably priced ship. We had quickly discovered that we were only company to vulgar sailors and captured fish. I cannot tell how it happened, but somehow we had managed to book our passage on a fishing boat called the S.S. Anne.  
My sister, Elisabeth, the blessed girl, had taken a keen interest in the inner workings of the ship. While I spent the majority of our passage in my cabin, accompanied by my books and candle light, she elected to spend her time with the captain, an old gristly Spaniard named Montague.  
Every day she would rise early in the morning to watch the captain work the ship. I cannot say what she observed for, as I have previously stated, I spent most of the journey in the seclusion of my quarters. I believe I have said before also that the company was of a filthy sort.  
Elisabeth, being the calm and reserved young lady that she was, had probably stood idle by and watched in silence as the captain made his rounds of the ship. For, that was her basic nature. On one occasion though, I elected to join her on her daily routine with the captain. He was a stout man, always with a thick grey stubble round his neck and a pipe smoldering in the corner of his mouth.  
"This is the helm." He told me, motioning towards the large wheel in the middle of one of the rooms. I cannot recall any other information of the inner workings of the ship that he had given me on that day, but that one article seems to stick out in my mind for some reason. "This is where I steer the ship." He told us. "Of course, your sister here knows so much already." He gave me a reproachful glare, as though he thought of me as a squatter, or some loafer that could better spend his time working on the ship.  
I averted my eyes from the grey old man and stared out to the open sea beyond the windows. Oh, if only I had known what great evil lay before me. Montague continued his speech about the inner workings of the ship, telling me about the scheduling and the instruments that his mates were working all around me. None of it really interested me, but how it could have saved me if only I had known. It may just be gods wish to torment me with these memories. Every night I sit up awake now and wonder what would have happened if only I had grabbed the helm and steered it a little to the left, or if I only had listened more attentively. Maybe I would not have seen the man adrift in the sea. Or, it could be that someone else would have found him, another ship hand maybe. It is all still likely that it was fated that he be found.  
It was in that instant, moments after looking out the window that I first saw the man. He was pale and weak looking, floating on a few stray boards out in the ocean. Even from high above the water in on the ship I could see what terrible condition he was in. He looked like little more than a corpse, bloated and dead in the water.  
It was at that moment that I forever sealed the fate of the ship. I called out to the captain and beckoned him to come to my side and see the man. He hurried over to me and looked carefully with his well trained eyes.  
"That man's alive!" he shouted. Then he called to his first mate and told him to hurry and bring the man out of the water. The first mate responded promptly and it was only a few moments before the man was aboard the ship and in the doctors' quarters.  
The doctor looked him over quickly and switched out his rags for some fresh, dry clothes gathered from the crew. It took a while longer after that before the man could return to consciousness though, and it was a long and agitated wait for me. I felt that I had some responsibility towards the man, that I had some power over him, having seen him and caused his salvation from the black depths.  
When the man came to he was speaking only gibberish. The doctor continued his examination and decided that the mans only maladies, other than malnourishment, would be mental. The man continued to rave about some monster. He screamed at the sky and tore at his shirt. "D'lartha!" he cried. "Cthulhu F'htagn!"  
If only I had known those words before the event, maybe I could have swayed it and saved my life, and the lives of the crew. It is funny to see how now I am the mad man, not he. Though he raved and ranted in tongues that we could not read, I now know of what he spoke.  
The doctor, upon examining the mans rags found a peculiar item among his possessions. It was a small green idol carved in some form of stone that the doctor had never observed. He said that it was some miracle. He showed it to me in a side room, afraid that it may upset the man further and cause his delicate mental balance to be thrown even further awry.  
When he held the small fetish up to the light before me it filled my veins with ice. The statuette was that of a small creature. Its head was similar to that of an octopus and its exquisitely crafted body was scaled, but like that of a mans. Only, its hands and feet were webbed and clawed. The creature sat on a small podium no more than an inch high. Its hands were planted on the back end of the podium and its legs were brought forewords as though it were throwing itself forewords. What made the creature an even grater spectacle was the pair of wings that billowed out from behind it. The creature looked massive, much larger than it truly was. The wings seemed to magnify it to a hundred, nay, a thousand times its' size. It was astonishing how much fear it instilled into my heart.  
I cannot explain the madness which overcame me next, for it was too powerful to be described. All that I can say is that I needed to know from where this creature's likeness came. I knew in my heart that it was real and I had to see it. The fetish had instilled in me a madness that could only be cured by its original.  
I forced the statuette from the hands of the doctor and ran back to the room in which Elisabeth, the captain, and the sick man were waiting. The man had ceased his ravings and was now sitting on the edge of the table conversing civilly with the ships captain. The captain quickly related the mans tragic tale to me. He said that the man was called Eric. He had been a sailor on a ship that had sunken into the sea. He had been with his ship when a great evil had risen from the water and torn the ship apart. The captain, it was easy to see, was a superstitious man and believed the tale to the letter.  
Eric gestured with his hands and spoke of a horrible city that had risen from the sea and of a mighty creature that had come out. He said that it was like that of a god. It had stood several hundred feet tall and swam through the water with all the quickness of a daemon. The man shivered when he related the tale to us. I could see the true terror in his eyes.  
That was when I held the statuette up to his gaze. It made him cringe with horror. "Where did you get that?" he cried. "It is the monster. That is the creature!"  
The doctor stepped up and took the idol from my hands. "The real question is, sir, where you got this. We found it among your clothes."  
The man shivered and we saw that he was truly swayed by this. His eyes seemed to spin in their sockets from the sheer terror. "It can't be!" he cried out. "I can feel him!" he tore the fetish from the doctors hand and ran out to the sea. With each step we could feel the entirety of the boat rock and sway in the ocean, as though some tremendous force was throwing us from side to side. We quickly made chase after Eric and followed him up to the main deck where we saw him toss the fetish into the deep blue sea.  
"What did you do that for?" I yelled. I was still over come with the madness you see. The sad thing is that I still am, in many ways. I ran up to Eric as the boat continued to buck in the wind and took the face of his shirt in my hands. "How could you do that? You threw it away! Now we can't get it back!" I screamed with all of my might.  
Eric looked at me knowingly and I could see that he understood my madness. He knew deep down in his heart just what I felt. "That was nothing that you needed" he said. "For, you will see it again soon enough."  
It was at that exact instant that all the wind went dead still and the ocean gave forth a great wave which threw our boat far off course. Then, from the sea some great cyclopean city rose. All of the angles of the structures seemed to shift and distort themselves into things that never should have been. I could not see for sure what any of the buildings purposes were, but I knew that each one held some secret horror, ready to unleash itself upon the world.  
Eric screamed and fell to the deck of the ship. "Cthulhu f'htagn!" he cried out. "Cthulhu f'htagn!" His eyes fixed on a great central building directly ahead of the ship. All the while he continued his cry. "Cthulhu F'htagn! Cthulhu F'htagn!"   
Then, the doors of the thousand foot building began to slowly open to reveal a horror whick still haunts me to this day. It was the mighty beast, the same that had been carved in the alien stone. It was the mighty Cthulhu. How did I know its name? I cannot tell, but from the gibberish that Eric wailed I knew that it was his title. The creature stood hundreds of feet tall. With one great dive I watched it plunge into the ocean and it quickly chased after our ship. The captain could do nothing to stop his fate from coming. He was far to shocked. Then, the creature devoured the entire ship. I watched in terror as it consumed my sister, and the dreams of the incident still haunt me to this day. Every time I close my eyes I can see her tortured face. In every breath I can hear her name "Elisabeth." My breath says. I keep thinking that there may have been some way that I could have saved her, some way that I could have kept her alive. It is my curse that I survived, though I know not how. The ship was destroyed and I found myself floating among the wreckage. When the beast had consumed the ship I had been knocked unconscious with terror. It was many hours later that I awoke. When I did I was greeted by nothing but endless ocean and the driftwood on which I floated.  
This is why, my captain, now that you have found me; you must use this information as some inspiration to save the lives of you and your crew.


End file.
